How a Victorian Lawyer from Wales Invented the Hydrogen Fuel Cell https://www.

Originally shared by Jennifer Ouellette

How a Victorian Lawyer from Wales Invented the Hydrogen Fuel Cell https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-victorian-lawyer-from-wales-invented-the-hydrogen-fuel-cell/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-victorian-lawyer-from-wales-invented-the-hydrogen-fuel-cell/

The title of this article is, actually, an example of what this article is talking about.

The title of this article is, actually, an example of what this article is talking about.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia?CMP=share_btn_fb

Bingo!

Bingo!

Originally shared by Guy Kawasaki

"Simply put, safe email is plain-text email..."
https://theconversation.com/the-only-safe-email-is-text-only-email-81434

Yes. We do affect the weather, too.

Yes. We do affect the weather, too.
http://news.agu.org/press-release/ship-exhaust-makes-oceanic-thunderstorms-more-intense/

Here’s what happens when you try to replicate climate contrarian papers | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | The...

Originally shared by Scott GrantSmith
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/25/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-replicate-climate-contrarian-papers

Fascinating! Someone should try that.

Fascinating! Someone should try that.

Originally shared by Vintage Space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiTjbsiKu6g&feature=autoshare

Researchers make major brain repair discovery in fight against Multiple Sclerosis

Originally shared by Corina Marinescu

Researchers make major brain repair discovery in fight against Multiple Sclerosis
Queen’s University Belfast scientists have discovered that specific cells from the immune system are key players in brain repair.

The research study, led by Dr Yvonne Dombrowski and Dr Denise Fitzgerald at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, is being hailed as a landmark study in unravelling the mysteries of how the brain repairs damage. This is crucial in the fight against MS, which affects 2.3 million people world-wide and over 4,500 people in Northern Ireland.

MS is the most common neurological disease affecting young adults and is the result of damage to myelin, the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres of the central nervous system – the brain, spinal cord and optic nerve. In MS, the immune system wrongly attacks the myelin sheath covering nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord, which can lead to symptoms such as vision loss, pain, fatigue and paralysis.

Until now, medical treatment could limit relapses but could not reverse the damage already done by the condition. The exciting aspect of this new research is that the team have uncovered beneficial effects of immune cells in myelin repair that have potential to reverse myelin damage. The study was an international collaboration including experts in Cambridge, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Maynooth and Nice.

This is a fundamental breakthrough that could revolutionise the treatment of debilitating neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

The research breakthrough, which has been published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that a protein made by certain cells within the immune system triggers the brain’s stem cells to mature into oligodendrocytes that repair myelin.

The discovery means that researchers can now use this new knowledge to develop medicines which will boost these particular cells and develop an entirely new class of treatments for the future.

Source & further reading:
http://www.qub.ac.uk/Connect/News/Allnews/QueensUniversityresearchersmakemajorbrainrepairdiscoveryinfightagainstMultipleSclerosis.html

Journal article:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v20/n5/full/nn.4528.html?foxtrotcallback=true

#neuroscience #MS #immunesystem #myelin #oligodendrocytes #immunecells #research

The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn/up-next?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=technology#t-1173304

http://bonkersworld.net/watches

Originally shared by Manu Cornet

http://bonkersworld.net/watches

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was one of our jewels.

Originally shared by David Brin

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was one of our jewels. Normally had about 60 staffers, to help assist WH staff in creating fact-grounded policy.President Obama expanded it well past 100, bringing in loads of question-asking consultants and speakers… like yours truly (twice in 2016 alone). “The size of the office under the Obama administration reflected Mr. Obama's "strong belief in science, the growing intersection of science and technology—”

Beyond advising the President on scientific discoveries and their implications for national policy, OSTP was involved in encouraging breakthroughs in STEM education and re-igniting a generation of skilled programmers. Heading OSTP was Presidential Science Adviser, a position generally filled by some of humanity’s sharpest minds.

All of that is over. President Trump has attrited the Science Office of OSTP to zero… that’s zero staff to consult with West Wing policy makers over anything scientific or related to science. OSTP as a whole is down to a couple of dozen placeholders.

Elsewhere, I wrote about David Gelernter, who seemed a front runner for the Science Adviser post, under Trump. A bizarre and polemically-driven person, Gelernter apparently would have been far too scientific for this White House. Perhaps they sensed that he would be capable - in extremis - of saying the hated phrase: “um… that’s not exactly true.”
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/04/in-defense-of-enlightenment-science.html

That, after all, was the criminal offense of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) which was banished by Newt Gingrich in 1995 for giving honest answers. And the fate now apparently destined for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), for similar treasons against dogma.

It is this fevered spite agains all fact-users that makes our current civil war completely unrelated to the old-hoary-lobotomizing “left-right” political “axis.” When all outcomes and metrics of US health and yes, economics and capitalism do vastly better under democrats, fact users become Enemy #1. And that’s ALL fact-users, now including even the FBI, the Intelligence Community and the U.S. Military Officer Corps. (Look up the term “deep state” to see how the mad right is justifying attacking even them!)
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/02/revenge-of-deep-state.html

Fans of the movie “Idiocracy” - and die hard confederates - may openly avow wishing for this rise of the know-nothings. But your conservative aunt might be swayed to pull away from this madness, if you dare her to name one profession of folks who actually know stuff that is not under open attack by her crazy husband and his ilk. She knows she will need skilled people, from time to time. Even if he convinces himself that fact-people are all satanic.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/science-division-of-white-house-office-now-empty-as-last-staffers-depart/

Google wants to kill your phone

Originally shared by Mike Elgan

Google wants to kill your phone

(Read my column: https://goo.gl/mtQCzC )

Google is working hard to make phones obsolete.

The company wouldn't admit this. And they don't want me to say it. They still have to make nice with mobile phone carriers who support and sell Android phones.

In getting rid of the phone as we know it, Google is both on the right side of history and also on your company's side. The post-phone world is a world with higher-quality voice communication, better security and telephony services that work better than today's communication apps.

Here's what Google is up to.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3204518/mobile-wireless/google-wants-to-kill-your-phone.html

#google #projectfi